Middle East peace force is needed to secure road-map

Seven-year-old Noam Leibovitch unintentionally provided a reminder of why the EU must not waver in its efforts to bring peace to the Middle East this week.

European Voice

6/18/03, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 8:55 AM CET

The Israeli girl died when her family’s car was sprayed with bullets on the outskirts of West Bank city Qalqiyah late on Tuesday night (17 June).

Predictably, the Israeli government has seized on her murder to accuse newly installed Palestinian premier Mahmoud Abbas of not doing enough to prevent terror attacks. Yet neither side in the Middle East conflict has shown any real determination to shield the young from bloodshed.

Indeed, Israeli troops injured seven children when they launched an assault that killed a Hamas militant in Gaza City last weekend.

Recriminations, then, will not save youngsters such as Noam Leibovitch. The only thing that will is a sustained political strategy, requiring a mix of audacity, pragmatism and the support of the international community.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said this week that he would discuss the possibility of sending a peacekeeping force to the Middle East with his EU counterparts.

Many might consider it premature for the Union to be contemplating such a move. After all, its first-ever peacekeeping venture – Operation Concordia in Macedonia – was only launched on 31 March. And Macedonia is, admittedly, an easy mission: former top NATO general Klaus Naumann called it a petite promenade. Since then the EU has begun its second – Operation Artemis in Congo. The 1,500 strong force faces the formidable task of trying to bring calm to a country where a war overlooked by the rest of the world has claimed 2.5 million lives – either directly through fighting or through its knock-on effects of disease and malnutrition.

Nevertheless, de Villepin’s suggestion merits serious study.

True, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan mooted the idea of a new peacekeeping force for the Middle East three years ago, Israel and the US rejected it. The proposal is hardly likely to be more palatable if it comes from France, given the lingering anger among numerous Americans and Israelis towards Paris’ opposition to the war in Iraq.

The fact of the matter, however, is that Israel has signed up to a road-map, designed to build a functioning and viable Palestinian state within a few years. A prerequisite of achieving that will be Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories. In such an eventuality, somebody is going to have to guarantee the legitimate security concerns of the Israelis, as well as protect Palestinian civilians and possibly supervise the return of at least some of their refugees.

So, a peacekeeping force will almost certainly be required. The questions that need to be addressed are what resources, remit and mandate it will have, and who will command it. As Miguel Moratinos, the outgoing EU envoy to the Middle East, told European Voice this week, the Union’s policymakers can take some credit for the road-map. Unlike the US and Israel, EU leaders have insisted this blueprint must be published and put in place ever since it was drawn up last year.

But worrying signals that the EU’s unity on the Middle East is at risk have emerged in the past fortnight. Silvio Berlusconi, who takes over the EU’s rotating presidency on 1 July, broke with precedent during his visit to the region by refusing to meet Yasser Arafat. Like him or hate him, the Union officially recognizes Arafat as the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian Authority.

Romano Prodi, the European Commission president and a political foe of Berlusconi, made a thinly-veiled attack on the Italian premier yesterday (18 June). “One has to talk to both protagonists,” Prodi declared. “Otherwise, there is no solution.”

Common sense suggests that Prodi is right. Much as it might hurt him to do so, Berlusconi should listen.

The keynote speaker at the 20th anniversary celebration of the European Medicines Agency offered some challenges to conventional thinking about the next 20 years – including carefully calculated provocations of his hosts.